AORUS X9 Gaming Laptop Packs Two GTX 1070s

The Aorus X9 is designed for gamers looking to play at QHD/UHD resolutions and is more than VR ready. Complimenting the dual GTX 1070s is an Intel Core i7-7820HK quad-core CPU. The CPU is unlocked, meaning users can overclock it on their own.

Chinese tech site Expreview reports that the six core Intel Core i7-8700K CPU has its overclocking potentials gimped once again as the company has decided to use lower quality TIM rather than solder.

The article states that while the chip itself is excellent and can overclock beyond 4.8GHz without dramatic increases in voltage, heat will be the greatest barrier to achieving this. While Expreview hasn’t posted pictures of the CPU de-lidded, the author attributes the thermal compound as the culprit, stating that the thermal compound applied under the lid is poor quality TIM rather than solder. As a result, those who want overclocks beyond 4.8 GHz or 5 GHz will [...]

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July 27, 2017

How to Increase FPS in Games

We’ve all been there. The moment when the new Call of Duty is released and we wait eagerly to download and install it only to find out that it runs at 10 FPS our old gaming system. Or after setting up a brand new “school” PC to find that it performance on CS:GO, TF2, LoL, and Overwatch isn’t exactly what you expected. It happens.

While the ideal thing to do at this point is to buy a completely new gaming PC with the best gaming graphics card and the best CPU, that’s unfortunately not feasible for most people. As such, here’s a list of the best ways to increase the FPS in your games before going out and spending $2,000 for a new gaming [...]

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October 12, 2017

5 Best PC Monitoring Tools to Check System Voltage, Temp, and Frequency

One of the most important pieces of software to have in any PC is some sort of hardware or system monitoring tool. While many think this is only necessary for overclockers who push their hardware to the absolute limits, it’s really not. I simply can’t tell you how many times I’ve had people ask me why their computer is running so slow or why their laptop is shutting down randomly because they had no idea that a fan died in their system and the system was overheating.

Lucky for you, this won’t happen to you because you’ll have a hardware monitoring tool which will help you diagnose any problems before handing your computer over to a [...]

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July 8, 2017

How to Overclock Your Monitor with an AMD Graphics Card

Not long ago, we wrote a guide on How to Overclock a Monitor with a Nvidia Graphics Card so naturally, the AMD version was on its way.

Today, it has arrived. In this guide, I’ll be showing you how to easily overclock your monitor using an AMD graphics card.

Overclock Your Monitor

Step 1

Download Custom Resolution Utility (CRU) here. This software will be needed to set a custom refresh rate for the monitor.

Step 2

Unzip and extract the zip file containing CRU to the desktop. Launch the CRU utility. You should be greeted to something like this.

Step 3

Click on the Add… [...]

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July 28, 2017

AMD Ryzen 7 1700X and 1800X Review

The AMD Ryzen Flagships

AMD launched their newest Ryzen CPUs to great fanfare back in March and while we found performance to be good in our launch review of the Ryzen 1700, we noted that there were quite a few growing pains that needed to be fixed before Ryzen could really shine against Intel. As such, rather than publishing another review of Ryzen on motherboards using incomplete BIOS firmware and badly optimized Windows, we decided to wait it out until AMD and its motherboard partners roll out the badly needed updates to allow Ryzen to really shine in all its glory.

The Best Graphics Cards of 2019

Picking out the best graphics card for your PC is one of the hardest decisions for a gamer. Finding the best graphics card at the right budget can take hours and hours of research and can be a daunting task even for those well versed in technology. To make things easy, we’ve researched and compiled a list of the best gaming graphics cards whether you’re planning on doing casual gaming, competitive eSports, 4K gaming, VR gaming, or anything in-between.

Best 4K & VR Graphics Card
Nvidia RTX 2080 Ti

Nvidia late last year announced the RTX 2080 Ti, the fastest gaming graphics card on the market. Packing a punch when it comes to performance [...]

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May 30, 2017

Intel Skylake-X De-lidded: Uses TIM, Not Solder

Intel recently released their Skylake-X and Kaby Lake-X processors to great fanfare, with the new flagship Skylake-X based Intel Core i9-7980XE featuring a massive 18-cores and 32-threads. However, overclocking enthusiasts are already up in arms as the new processors which Intel claims are designed for “overclocking” may not actually be as overclocking friendly as Intel claims.

In a recent de-lidding video released by world renowned overclocker der8auer, it was revealed that Intel is now skimping on the thermal interface material even on their high end X-Series processors. In the video, we can see that Intel is using their cheap TIM (Thermal Interface [...]

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July 30, 2017

ASUS STRIX Radeon RX 570 4GB Review

Polaris Enhanced?

A few weeks ago, AMD launched the Radeon RX 500 series, which is mostly a refresh of the previous-generation RX 400 series they launched less than a year ago. Mostly because the Radeon RX 500 series is based on the very same Polaris architecture as its predecessor, albeit on a slightly more mature process. Whatever your stance on rebadges, it’s clear that AMD has decided to double-down on its Polaris architecture in 2017, at least for the midrange and entry-level segments until its RX Vega GPUs appear later on to cover the high-end market. So like it are not, Polaris is here to stay for the foreseeable future.

Today, ZOTAC has announced refreshed versions of their GeForce GTX 1080 AMP Extreme, and GeForce GTX 1060 AMP+. The new cards will feature NVIDIA’s new, faster 11 Gbps and 9.0 Gbps memory for the two GPUs.

ZOTAC GeForce GTX 1080 AMP! Extreme with 11 Gbps Memory

Starting with the higher-end of the two, we have the ZOTAC GeForced GTX 1080 AMP! Extreme. This card is virtually identical to the previous version of the GTX 1080 AMP! Extreme which the company debuted alongside the GeForce 10 series last year. However, this new model features faster 11Gbps GDDR5X memory, compared to the 10Gbps memory of the previous version.